Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Colorado lawmakers unanimously thwart federal water grab

by Randy Wyrick

Colorado lawmakers unanimously made federal water grabs almost impossible.

The Colorado Water Rights Protection Act passed both the Colorado House
and Senate without a single dissenting vote. The bill thwarts federal
efforts to control or own water that begins on or passes through federal
land, and to do so without paying for it.

That’s important in our region because about 80 percent of Eagle and
Summit counties are federal land, said Glenn Porzak, one of the world’s
leading water attorneys.

In fact, the
Eagle River Water & Sanitation District and Upper Eagle Regional
Water Authority both have water infrastructure on federal lands.

Porzak with Porzak, Browning &
Bushong, is water counsel for Eagle River Water & Sanitation
District, Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority and many others. He
worked on the bill for three years.

...Porzak said the legislation does three things:

1. Forces the feds to buy water rights, instead of taking them by manipulating policy.

2. Forces the feds to go through state water court, in compliance with federal law.

3.
Orders Colorado’s state engineer not to enforce any water rights
restriction by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management,
and provides tools for water right holders to fight these agencies in
court if necessary.

In other words, if the feds want water rights, then they have to buy them, like everyone else does.

...The impetus for the bill began in 2012,
when the Forest Service demanded that ski areas, in exchange for
renewing their leases on public land, turn over their private state
issued water rights to the federal government.

The ski areas sued and the U.S. Forest Service lost on procedural
grounds. The Court ordered the Forest Service to go back to the drawing
board, and while improvements have been made in the context of ski area
policy, the Forest Service has subsequently issued other policy
directives that raise additional concerns for private water right
holders throughout Colorado.